Rowayat seeks original writing for upcoming online publications. Submission categories are Fiction, CNF, Poetry, Flash Fiction, Comics, Art, Reviews and Interviews - in English or French or Arabic in translation. Contributors do not need to identify as Arab/SWANA descent, provided their work is in dialogue with the transnational social realities of the Afro/Arab regions and their diaspora communities. Contributors may also decide to expand this reality altogether.

Rowayat accepts unsolicited submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction during our reading periods. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know as soon as your submission is accepted elsewhere. We aim to respond within 3 months.

Our review process is semi-anonymous (our readers do not know the names of submitters, and then they pass all submissions to the genre editors. You may submit to more than one genre (but only one submission per genre—thank you!).

Submit now to Rowayat Gemeza's (Young Readers Issue #11: Our Culture Our Stories: Together We Belong

February 1st to March 14th 2025

Sara Imam is Rowayat Gemeza's (Young Readers) Managing Editor, sara@rowayat.org

Sara Imam is an Egyptian storyteller who focuses on education, development, and celebrating diversity through stories. Blending ancient lore with contemporary nuances. In 2019, Imam attended an intensive oral storytelling workshop in Amsterdam that ended with her first solo performance. Under the tutelage of storyteller Chirine Al-Ansary since 2020, Sara has honed her craft, captivating audiences of both children and adults alike. She is a member of Irtigalia Honn, an improv theatre troupe founded by Ramsi Lehner; she is also an actress at Sitara Theatre for Children and a trainer at Aspire Community Training and Consulting Company. 

Submit Now to Issue #12: Echoes

March 7th-April 8th 2025

“Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

From the moment our ancestors traced their hands onto cave walls, we have fought against oblivion. Across time, we have carved, inked, painted, and spoken our existence into being—witnessing, remembering, refusing to be erased.

Today, as cultural identities are threatened and entire communities face erasure under the weight of colonialism, our art becomes an act of resistance, a way of reclaiming what is lost. What do you, as a creative, refuse to let slip into silence? What must endure? What deserves to be etched in stone?

For Rowayat Issue #12, we invite stories, poems, creative nonfiction, and artwork that preserve what should not be forgotten. Or turn the theme inside out—examine what is too unbearable to remember, explore the absences, the voids, the truths that lie in the negative space of what cannot be spoken.

Send us the echoes that demand to be heard.

Meet Rowayat’s Guest Editors for Issue #12: 

Fatima ElKalay is Rowayat’s Issue 12 Managing Editor, fatima@rowayat.org

Fatima ElKalay has been captivated by poetry since the age of six, and her journey as a poet, translator, and editor has spanned over three decades. She has been the backbone of Rowayat since its inception over a decade ago, helping to shape its literary vision with her deep commitment to storytelling and poetic expression. After serving as Poetry Editor for multiple issues, Fatima has now taken the helm as Managing Editor of Issue 12, bringing her meticulous eye, creative energy, and unwavering dedication to the role.

Fatima holds an M.Litt in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, where she honed her craft as both a poet and storyteller. Her work has earned critical acclaim, including being shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize and the ArabLit Story Prize for short fiction in translation.

Beyond editing, Fatima is a prolific translator of Arabic literature, committed to bridging cultures through words. Most recently, she translated the first two chapters of Mansoura Ez-Eldin’s Akhilat Al-Dhil (Shadow Spectres), which was published for the first time in English in The Markaz Review. Her translation work extends across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, amplifying voices that might otherwise remain unheard.

In 2022, Fatima published her first collaborative collection, Dessert for Three, a genre-blending exploration of fiction and memoir. She is also the author of Basel’s First Trip, a children’s story featured in issue 9 of Rowayat Gemeza for Young Readers.

With her deep literary expertise and editorial leadership, Fatima continues to shape Rowayat’s evolving narrative, ensuring that each issue resonates with powerful, diverse voices from the region and beyond. 

Medina Tenour Whiteman is Rowayat’s Poetry Editor

Medina Tenour Whiteman is a British-American Muslim writer, poet and singer based near Granada in Spain. She is the author of the poetry collection Love is a Traveller and We Are Its Path (Ecstatic Exchange, 2016), Huma’s Travel Guide to Islamic Spain (2017), and The Invisible Muslim: Journeys Through Whiteness and Islam (Hurst, 2020). Her work has appeared on BBC Radio, Critical Muslim, Sacred Footsteps, Amaliah, Rowayat, and other international platforms, as well as being anthologised in A Kaleidoscope of Stories (Lote Tree Press, 2020), The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human (Leave it Better Press, 2024), and Meandering: Art, Ecology and Metaphysics (Sternberg Press, 2024). She is cofounder of the Muslim Writers' Salon and regularly holds creative writing workshops online and in person. 

Ambata Kazi is Rowayat’s Fiction Editor

Ambata Kazi is a writer and editor from New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States. She received a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. Her fiction writing has been featured in Carve, Torch Literary Arts, Muslim American Writers at Home, CRAFT, midnight & indigo, and other publications. Her first novel, Far Away From Here, will be published with SparkPress in August 2025. She is the senior editor at Sapelo Square, an online multidisciplinary journal that centers Black Muslim histories and contemporary realities. Her website is ambatakazi.com.

Gaya Nagahawatta is Rowayat’s Nonfiction Editor

Gaya Nagahawatta is a Sri Lankan writer, translator, language editor, and theatre and audio-visual practitioner working in both Sinhala and English. With extensive experience in communications across international, state, and private sector organizations, she has also served as a jury member on state theatre and literary panels. She has translated and edited acclaimed collections of stories, poetry, and plays, as well as subtitled award-winning films. Her works have appeared on adda (Commonwealth Foundation) and Literary Shanghai, as well as in collections published by the SAARC Cultural Centre, Women Unlimited (India), Bloodaxe Books (UK), and leading Sri Lankan publishers. Find her on Facebook and Instagram (@gaya.nagahawatta). For more, visit kathakiyanno.org.

Mohsen Mohamed is Rowayat’s Arabic Literature Editor mohsen@rowayat.org. 

Mohsen Mohamed is an award-winning poet whose works have been featured in prominent journals and magazines such as Cordite, Poetry Magazine, Media Part, NRC, and others. He’s an Arabic in translation editor at Rowayat and has participated in numerous literary festivals. In 2014, Mohsen was arrested on the fringes of a protest on the campus of Mansoura University, where he was a first-year student. Although he had no involvement with the protest, Mohsen spent five years in the Egyptian prison system before being released in early 2019. During his time inside, he completed his university degree and wrote his first poetry collection, Mafeesh raqam birudd مفيش رقم بيرد (No One Is on the Line). This collection won the Sawiris Cultural Award and the Cairo International Book Fair Prize for vernacular poetry under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture despite his imprisonment. He is currently working on another collection of poems around the theme of identity and exile as well as having published several articles around these themes. When Mohsen is depressed, he tries to solve a mathematical problem, which he can’t, and he gets depressed even more. Mohsen loves to travel; he says, “He was a bit incarcerated, but he is, now, so free.

• Rowayat Editorial Interns for Issue 12:
• Mai Khaled is a writer and editor based in Cairo. She earned a BA in English Literature from Cairo University in 2022. Before returning to academia to pursue an MA in experimental writing, she worked briefly as a photographer. Her non-academic writing can be found in her personal Substack newsletter, The Ibis Tongue. Mai’s writing explores various questions on language and identity among other things, through a phenomenological lens. Beyond the written word, she enjoys music, cinema, birdwatching, and tarot reading. She's @jonnibis on Instagram.
• Dennis Farnsworth is currently a fellow in advanced Arabic studies at the CASA@AUC program in Cairo. His educational background has been shaped by the intersection and dual study of fine arts and languages, which is being explored in the cultural publication Shoebox that he has been developing over the past year. He has a deep interest in literature, writing and reading, and especially in how language and culture can act as modes for learning and critical thinking. He is very excited to be on the team for the 12th issue of Rowayat as an assistant translator and editor, and looks forward to growing and learning from this collaborative experience. 
• Saty Mukherjee (They/Them) is an emerging copy-editor and writer born in India but raised in the quiet suburbs of New Jersey. They currently work part-time as an English Tutor and as a reader for Wallstrait, Chestnut Review, and The Common. They take inspiration from many places, ranging from the quiet aisles of a grocery store, the sprawling landscapes of the video games they play, and the powerful stories in the books they read. Although their work is yet to be published, they look forward to sharing their voice with a broader audience in the near future. On the days they aren’t working, they can often be found immersed in needlework, lost in their favorite game, or reading by the warm glow of a lamp clamped to their windowsill.